Month: May 2011
Driving the Saudis crazy
The Saudi authorities are cracking down on the spreading women’s protest, which intends to flood the streets June 17 with women driving. This is not the first time women have challenged the authorities on this issue, but the Arab Spring gives the protest a decidedly sharper edge this time around.
Religious conservatives worry that women driving will inevitably lead to breaks in the strict segregation of genders practiced in the Kingdom. They are correct. It will make women’s faces visible, reduce their dependence on male relatives and allow them higher-profile roles in the society. More than half the university students in Saudi Arabia are women, and have been since 1984. The Kingdom recently opened what is intended to be the largest women’s university in the world. It is high time that they come out from under the burkha, if they want to do so. And not just because they might need to drive if a husband suffers a heart attack, as the courageous Manal Sharif says disingenuously:
I wouldn’t want to suggest that the United States needs to fix this or any number of other respects in which Saudi Arabia’s policies are inconsistent with human rights standards. We’ve got our own problems recognizing that all people are created equal.
But we should not make the mistake of viewing this as a peripheral issue. It is not. Nor is Saudi Arabia completely immune to the infection we have come to call the Arab Spring, though it may be more resistant (as Chas Freeman believes). The King’s efforts to inoculate his population with hard cash and frequent consultation may not work with women.
I don’t know whether this protest will catch on or not, but if it does I am going to hope the women not only drive, but drive the Saudi men crazy.
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Gaddafi won’t stop or go
While Bashar al Assad won’t stop the repression in Syria and Ali Abdullah Saleh won’t leave office in Yemen, Muammar Gaddafi is willing to do neither in Libya.
NATO is pounding Gaddafi’s command centers more seriously than in the past, and the Benghazi-based National Transitional Council is gaining diplomatic prominence. Yesterday, the European Union’s “foreign minister” Catherine Ashton opened an EU office in Benghazi. I think some Americans are already there, though they have not made a big deal about it. President Obama said in his Middle East speech on Thursday that Gaddafi would “inevitably” leave power–when Americans use the i-word, they usually mean that they are trying hard to make it happen.
The Libyan oil minister has defected, Gaddafi’s wife and daughter are reportedly in Tunisia and the International Criminal Court prosecutor has requested a warrant for his arrest. As the prosecutor put it:
The evidence shows that Muammar Gaddafi, personally, ordered attacks on unarmed Libyan civilians. His forces attacked Libyan civilians in their homes and in the public space, repressed demonstrations with live ammunition, used heavy artillery against participants in funeral processions, and placed snipers to kill those leaving mosques after the prayers.
Also included in the request to the judges for arrest warrants are Gaddafi’s son Saif al Islam and brother-in-law, who heads the military intelligence service.
This real-time use of judicial proceedings is controversial, as it appears to close off options for Gaddafi and give him an incentive to continue his resistance. My own view is different. He has had lots of opportunity to stop the repression and leave Libya. The arrest warrants, if they are issued, will be a clear and compelling warning to his subordinates that they face the same fate if they don’t act soon to stop Gaddafi’s criminal behavior.
It is impossible to predict how much longer the military campaign against Gaddafi will have to continue before he leaves the scene, one way or the other. Smarter folks are saying there is a stalemate, but my sense is that Gaddafi’s military capabilities are gradually eroding and that at some point the Libyan people will discover that his fortress is largely empty. I wouldn’t want to be identifiable as being on his side when that day comes.
PS: On Saif and his relationship with Muammar, see yesterday’s New York magazine piece, “The Good Bad Son.”
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Saleh won’t go
President Saleh of Yemen today again refused to sign the Gulf Cooperation Council agreement that would have him step down in 30 days. This time he is insisting on a public signing, while flooding the streets with loyalists who have trapped the American and EU ambassadors along with others in the United Arab Emirates embassy in Sanaa.
It is anyone’s guess how today will wind up. Brian Whitaker, who certainly knows Yemen better than I do, sees little possibility of the president wriggling out, mainly because the Saudis won’t let him. But I think it is a pretty good bet that we are more than 30 days from Saleh stepping down.
If he is smart–and generally he is at least wily–his security forces are likely to “rescue” the American and other ambassadors, after letting them stew a while. Even if he ends up having to sign the agreement, implementation is going to be difficult. He has slipped the leash before and will certainly try to do it again. Only when he sees the real possibility of needing the immunity provided for in the agreement will he go.
In the meanwhile, there are tensions between the opposition political parties and the protesters who have sustained the effort to oust Saleh. They have never really been united. It is the opposition parties, not the protesters, who have signed the agreement. They will need to retain the capability of putting large numbers of people in the streets if they want the transition to be a real one and not just a reshuffling of the Yemeni elite.
That is certainly what the Saudis have in mind, though that may give them more credit for a coherent view than Ginny Hill of Chatham House did in an appearance last week at the Middle East Institute. The aging and health problems of the Crown Prince seem to have cut off payments to the Yemeni tribes and reduced Saudi Arabia’s ability to impose a solution in Sanaa. Maybe Saleh’s latest maneuvers will awaken them to the need for decisive action by the GCC. Failing that, Saleh could continue to not go for a while yet.
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Bashar won’t stop
I’d have liked to entitle this post “stop!”, but I know that Bashar al Assad won’t. He is fully committed to the crackdown. If it doesn’t succeed, he knows he will have to step down, or be drawn and quartered. I understand why President Obama Thursday offered him the option of leading the way on reform, but it has been clear for some time that will not happen.
Instead, Bashar intends to frighten his population into submission. He is scary. It would be foolish to express any certainty about whether repression will work or not. It depends on unknowable factors like the courage of Syrian young people, the unity of the army and the loyalty of regime cronies. Even someone inside Syria would have a hard time making definitive judgments on these factors, which will clarify only the day after the rebellion succeeds or is defeated.
In the meanwhile, what should we be doing? First and foremost what President Obama tried to accomplish in his speech: make sure everyone concerned understands that the United States stands with those who protest peacefully for freedom and human dignity. We should not expect instantaneous results from this, and our stance may not weigh heavily in the mix. But for our own sake, we need to be clear that the regime’s behavior is wrong. Naming Bashar and other heavies to the sanctions list, which Washington did earlier this week, is a necessary corollary.
What else can we do? Listen, and amplify the voices of those who are courageous enough to speak out. Dorothy Parvaz, an Iranian American journalist arrested in Syria and deported to Iran, is one of the few professional journalists who has seen Syrian treatment of prisoners up close (I would discount her description of treatment in Iran, since she has relatives there and intends to visit them again soon):
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The two face solution
President Obama’s statement of the obvious yesterday–that the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine should be based on Israel’s 1967 borders, with agreed land swaps–has created a furor. This is difficult to understand. All the serious talks on borders have started with 1967 as the basis, even if that hasn’t been explicitly endorsed by American presidents and secretaries of state.
Rob Satloff of the Washington Institute for Near East Affairs waxes passionate but incoherent on the subject:
The idea of land swaps, which may very well be a solution that the parties themselves choose to pursue, sounds very different when endorsed by the president of the United States. In effect, it means that the U.S. view is that resolution of the territorial aspect of the conflict can only be achieved if Israel cedes territory it held even before the 1967 war.
Yes, that’s right, if Israel wants to preserve some of the settlements on the West Bank, it will have to give up land it held before 1967, precisely the idea that the Washington Institute explored thoroughly in a January 2011 publication and one of its stalwarts supported in an op/ed yesterday.
So why do Prime Minister Netanyahu and his supporters get so upset when the President says something that other Israeli prime ministers accepted long ago? The answer, I am afraid, is that Netanyahu is not like other Israeli prime ministers. It is not just the 1967 borders as the basis for negotiation that he rejects. He also rejects the idea of a two-state solution. He has occasionally talked the right talk, under strong pressure and with caveats about recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, but he does not walk the walk.
This is because his attachment to the settlements is far stronger than that of other Israeli prime ministers. This is apparent from the efforts of his supporters to claim American support for settlement activity that simply does not exist, as explained by former Ambassador to Israel Dan Kurtzer. Netanyahu has no intention of being the Israeli prime minister who recognizes a viable Palestinian state, because he knows this means abandonment of settlements to which he is committed for ideological and practical reasons: they make the land of Israel whole and provide him with ample political support.
Obama has called Netanyahu’s bluff. Netanyahu has demonstrated that he says he supports the two-state solution while in fact trying to block it. His is a two face solution.
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A right-minded but (mostly) forgettable speech
It is hard for me to knock a speech whose most frequently occurring words are “region” “must,” “change,” “people,” and “rights.” There has to be something to appreciate there. The President was particularly good on Tunisia and Egypt, supporting completion of their transitions to democracy and offering economic help, mainly through debt forgiveness, trade and investment. He was better on Bahrain than I might have expected, underlining that the destruction of Shia mosques there is unacceptable (thank you Roy Gutman for your reporting on that!).
On Syria, he was so-so, appealing once again for Bashar al Assad to lead reform (fat chance) or step aside (fat chance of that too). But that is farther than Obama has gone in the past. He gave President Saleh of Yemen a push toward the exit, but it did not seem to have any real force behind it.
The President was overoptimistic on both Afghanistan and Iraq, claiming we have broken the momentum of the insurgency in the former and established multiethnic and nonsectarian government in the latter. Both may happen, but they aren’t consolidated achievements yet.
On Israel/Palestine, the President took something like Shimon Peres’ approach: focus for now on defining Palestine’s territory and ensuring Israel’s security, solve Jerusalem and refugee return later. Rhetorical support for Israel was strong, as was opposition to the Palestinian effort to get the UN General Assembly to approve statehood. But there was really nothing new. That might be the best he can do for the moment, which is not propitious.
No mention of Saudi Arabia. A bit of talk about Iranian hypocrisy in providing assistance to Syria in repressing demonstrators, but no clarion call for rebellion there. Strong on women’s rights, inter-religious dialogue and rejection of political violence. Big throughout on self-determination (Palestinians take note), values as a focus for American policy in addition to interests, universal rights and strengthening the economic underpinnings of political transition.
A right-minded but I am afraid forgettable speech.
PS: I did not anticipate when I wrote this piece quickly this afternoon the furor that has erupted over the President’s endorsement of the ’67 borders of Israel as the basis for negotiations and eventual land swaps. It is still a bit hard for me to see what other basis there would be in a “land for peace” deal, but I take the point that this is the first time an American president has endorsed an idea that many of us take for granted. Those who object need to explain what other basis there might be for the territorial solution, other than “making the land whole.”
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